Ecclesiology Today
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ET COVER No33 10/6/2004 2:58 pm Page 1 Ecclesiology Today ISSUE 33 Journal of the Ecclesiological Society MAY 2004 ET 33 - May 2004 10/6/2004 2:13 pm Page 1 Ecclesiology Today C ontents Journal of the Ecclesiological Society Articles Chairman’s Letter 2 The Protestants in Rome John Elliott 3 Two Eastern-Christian Churches in London Society Nial Finnernan 9 Dom Paul Bellot OSB,Twentieth Century Monk Architect and Quarr Abbey, Isle of Wight Stewart Abbott 15 Henry Woodyer and Wokingham Issue 33 Peter Blacklock 26 May 2004 Two Late Nineteenth-century Roman Catholic Churches in Toronto Malcolm Thurlby 30 Hon. Editor ‘It is barbaric art in that it is entirely uncomposed, John Elliott, MA,PhD but it is full of vitality and zest.’ Some thoughts on the Stoke Dry fragments. Chris Tuckley 49 ISSN: 1460–4213 Odds & Ends Best of 300 – Tourist Church Awards 64 Ó The Ecclesiological Society 2004 All rights reserved Regular Features Book Reviews 65 Society website: www.ecclsoc.org News Your Letters 69 Churchcrawler Writes 71 Charity No: 210501 The illustration on the cover is of the Protestant Cemetery, Rome. ET 33 - May 2004 10/6/2004 2:13 pm Page 2 ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY 33 · MAY 2004 Chairman’s Letter THIS HAS BEEN A COMPLICATED FEW MONTHS, during which we have mailed four items – both this and the January edition of Ecclesiology Today, our anniversary present of Temples worthy of His presence, and the booklet entitled How do we keep our Parish Churches? Everyone who is currently a member should have received all of these: but it is easy to get in a muddle, with joiners, leavers, re-joiners with late subscriptions (usually accompanied by letters of apology – thank you), and changes of address. With the publication a year or two back of our books on Southwark churches and Albi Cathedral, it has been a rich haul. And looking forward, we are hoping for one more substantial publication, probably within the next twelve months. One member expressed some astonishment at what we managed to produce for the subscription. I hope we do provide value for money.But I need to disillusion anyone who thinks that this level of largesse is the norm.To put it bluntly, we have been playing catch-up. In addition, the Southwark book was supported by a legacy left to us many years ago by R Harrison, for publications on London churches; and Temples was subsidised by a more recent legacy, from F R Goodger. The norm is for three issues of Ecclesiology Today per year, the cost of which is approximately met by subscriptions, and, from time to time, a one-off publication, normally a booklet , typically paid for from our investment income or dedicated funds.The new format of Ecclesiology Today seemed to win general approval, but is more expensive to produce, so we may find ourselves producing fewer one-off publications in future.We will see. Incidentally,the Society is always grateful to receive legacies.We are by no means needy. But capital gifts do allow us to undertake special projects, some of them outside the routine of our activities. As well as supporting the issue of Temples, the Goodger Fund helped finance the printing of a book on the stained glass of Frederick Preedy, underwrote the risk of production of the Society’s tie (sales of which have been good, allowing the Fund to be paid back), and was used for the purchase of a part set of The Ecclesiologist for use by the Editor of Ecclesiology Today. I and the other members of Council look forward to meeting you at our forthcoming events. Trevor Cooper, Chairman of Council April 2004 2 ET 33 - May 2004 10/6/2004 2:13 pm Page 3 The Protestants in Rome John Elliott ROME, AND IN FACT MUCH OF ITALY, has always been John Elliott teaches at the University of attractive to those wishing to escape the cold and damp of Reading, edits Ecclesiology Today and is a director of Spire Books Ltd. northern Europe. Strangely it has also been popular with Americans. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was not just the weather of Rome that called but, in an age which looked to the St Paul Within the Walls, western exterior. 3 ET 33 - May 2004 10/6/2004 2:13 pm Page 4 ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY 33 · MAY 2004 past for its inspiration, the Roman ruins were an almost overpowering fascination for those who could afford to travel that far. More practically the eternal city could also provide anonymity for illicit unions that would have spelt ruination at home. However, many of the visitors were Protestants rather than Roman Catholics and when in Rome they certainly did not want to do what the Romans did. More problematically if illness struck them down on their travels they could not be buried in the graveyards under Roman Catholic control. Some other arrangements were needed and today the results provide two wonderful interludes between the mandatory tourist visits to the Roman ruins and the Vatican. 4 ET 33 - May 2004 10/6/2004 2:13 pm Page 5 THE PROTESTANTS IN ROME Perhaps the most spectacular is St Paul’s Within the Walls, the American Episcopal church which was designed by G.E.Street and built on the Via Nazionale, close to the Piazza della Repubblica and the Opera house. You won’t find it listed in many of the tourist guides but it is well worth the trouble involved in locating it. In 1859,Alonzo Potter, the Bishop of Pennsylvania, celebrated the Eucharist in a private house on Trinità dei Monti.This was the first time that such a “Protestant” service had been held in the Rome. A series of temporary homes were then used to provide services, until in 1866, an old granary outside the Porta del Popolo was renovated as a more permanent home which would hold 500. In 1869 a new constitution gave Rome and its citizens a freedom of worship and non-Roman Catholic churches were permitted to be built within the walls of the city. Just a few years later, in 1872, a plot of land was bought for $18,500. In November 1872 the foundations were started, and on the feast of St. Paul, 25th January 1873, the cornerstone was laid, The Churchman of 27 January 1873 reporting: Several of the Roman papers of yesterday or today give more or less detailed accounts of an event which must have awakened unwonted reflections in the mind of many a thoughtful Roman; the first stone has Above: stained glass by Clayton & been freely, formally, and openly laid, of a church which is designed to Bell. rise toward heaven, a solemn witness, in this papal city, of a faith which Below: Mosaics by Burne-Jones. is Catholic without being papal, and Protestant without ceasing to be 5 ET 33 - May 2004 10/6/2004 2:14 pm Page 6 ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY 33 · MAY 2004 Catholic. If the completed church arrests the attention of Italians in any proportion to the effect of this laying of its cornerstone, the Festival of St Paul, 1873, will be an epoch, not merely as a friend said to me, in the history of our Church, but in that of the Church of Italy as well. [Fifty Years of St. Paul's American Church, Rome: some historical notes and descriptions by the Rector (Walter Lowrie, Rome 1926)] Street provided the design, writing: We are going to start for Rome tomorrow night. I am going to look at a church I have just built for the English at Geneva, and then to look at sites for two churches in Rome - one for the English, the other for the Yankee Episcopalians. By very odd coincidence they both came to me without knowing the other's intentions. (Letter from Street to F.G. Stephens, 25 February 1872). 6 ET 33 - May 2004 10/6/2004 2:14 pm Page 7 THE PROTESTANTS IN ROME The result is spectacular. Polychrome brick from Siena alternating with uneven courses of travertine from Tivoli and in a style that in London might be called Ruskinian Gothic. The western end and campanile can be seen from half a mile away, standing proud as a fusion of All Saints, Boyne Hill in Maidenhead; St James the Less, Pimlico and the Carey Street front of the Law Courts in the Strand. Wonderfully different from everything around it and so magnificently English in a foreign sort of way! The inside is no less spectacular. There are seven bays, two aisles, a nave and elevated chancel, with extensive mosaics by Burne-Jones and some some super stained glass by Clayton & Bell.This should be a must for every visitor to Rome. 7 ET 33 - May 2004 10/6/2004 2:14 pm Page 8 ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY 33 · MAY 2004 While the provision of a purpose-built place of worship had to wait until 1872, the “Protestants” of Rome made provision for those who died in the city as early as 1738 when a 25 year-old Oxford graduate named Langton was buried in land adjacent to the Cestius Pyramid. The pyramid is a striking local landmark just off the via Aventino along which travellers from the Flumicino airport will pass on their way into the city. Supposedly built in the first century BC, the pyramid provides a dramatic beacon at one end of what must be one of the best preserved eighteenth and nineteenth-century graveyards anywhere in the world.